Poetry
And So I Sing to the Old Perpetual Death
C. Earl Nelson
as tho the women are not enough;
the jobs are not enough;
the automobiles and skyscrapers, insufficient;
the black lungs dripping with heat
miles of highway and belligerence, nothing.
i sing the old songs.
i sing to forget 28 years
and 35 women
and sing to forget that i kept
such boyish numbers in my pocket.
sing to grandfather long stiff,
to his tools rusting in a shed twenty miles
from here.
sing to my daughter
who i havent seen in two years.
i sing to the rats in cages.
i sing
to the ensuing death of my mother and father.
i sing to my loneliness.
i sing to the stench of twentydollar sex
in the front seat of a chrysler,
i sing to her sixhundred miles.
i sing to the old perpetual death,
to the graves freshly turned,
the bullets continuous,
the ropes stretching, the
tourniquet lashed
quickly to forget.
i sing to climb back into the womb.
i sing to charge the nightsky with fire
with phosphorescent leering eye.
sing to make widows lust
to drive the nails home,
i sing.